Boundary rider

“ It has proved to be like the horizon, when one is walking towards it; it has never been a real barrier, but always movable, and always a line of strife and conflict. It has been shifting between every mountain range and every broad river between the Gulf of Mexico and the Lake of the Woods, till it has become self-obliterated, and no longer a significant word. Our frontiers, which that boundary line was supposed to limit, have become merged and blurred on the whole of this side of our continent, and have begun to advance inwards from the Pacific coast. ”

“ We do not want you, and have no designs upon you, but—purely for the sake of argument, and talking as enlightened persons—is it not rather fantastic? Is a boundary-line such an object in itself? May not a good deal that has stood for patriotism in the past be a mere provincial narrowness? ”

“ In arcifinious lands, where the bounds are formed by nature, any gradual change in the course of the river makes a change also in the boundaries of territory, and whatever accession is given by the river to one side, it will belong to the possessor of the land on that side. Because the respective nations are supposed originally to have taken possession of those lands, with an intention of making the MIDDLE of that river, as a natural boundary, the line of separation between them. ”

“ Look around! there lie the fields, the vineyards,—whose are they? There stand stones, boundary-stones, placed here and there over the land, as points of legal division between mine and thine; no one can step over the boundary of another, or encroach on another's domain; they are the scattered stones, which, in the eye of the imagination, help to form the great temple of law which protects humanity. Not so evident, but not less firmly fixed, are the boundary-stones throughout life; you may not encroach on what belongs to another, on the results of his labor and of his natural powers. ”

“ It has been decided again and again that the meander line is not a boundary, but that the body of water whose margin is meandered is the true boundary. Railroad Co. v. Schurmeir, 7 Wall. 272; Jefferis v. ”

“ If it has happened that through engineering difficulties-as the interposition of a mountain or a river-the line is deflected so as to cross the boundary, and run for the time being in another state than that of its principal location, does such detour in itself impress an external character on internal intercourse? ”

“ Gradually however natural features of the land lose value as national boundaries. This is the result of man’s progress, of the development of railways or wireless stations. It is the removal of natural obstacles; the conquest of distance by speed. All these advances tend to promote intercourse. They are opening the vista of a day when an international boundary will [328] have no greater importance in world affairs than the limiting line of a city plot. ”

“ When it is contiguous with the border of another state or race, the two form a zone in which ascendency from one side or the other is being established. The boundary fluctuates, for equilibrium of the contending forces is established rarely and for only short periods. The more aggressive people throws out across this debatable zone, along the lines of least resistance or greatest attraction, long streamers of occupation; so that the frontier takes on the form of a fringe of settlement, whose interstices are occupied by a corresponding fringe of the displaced people. ”

“ From a review of the authorities upon international law, it was declared that when a navigable river constituted the boundary between two independent States the interest of each State in the navigation, and the preservation by each of its equal right in such navigation, required that the middle of the channel should mark the boundary up to which each State on its side should exercise jurisdiction ”

“ In preparing the official plat from the field-notes the meander line is represented as the border line of the stream, and shows to a demonstration that the water-course, and not the meander line, as actually run on the land, is the boundary.' It has never been held that the lands under water, in front of such grants, are reserved to the United States, or that they can be afterwards granted out to other persons, to the injury of the original grantees. ”

“ For, in truth, just as a stone piller constitutes a boundary, not because it is a stone, but because of the place in which is stands, so a river is made the limit of nations, not because it is running water bearing a certain geographical name, but because it is water flowing in a given channel, and within given banks, which are the real international boundary. ”

“ Has the United States lost title to Sand island by reason of the change in the main channel? And if by accretion the north should again become the main channel, would the boundary revert to the center of that channel? In other words, does the boundary move from one channel to the other, according to which is, for the time being, the most important, the one most generally used? ”

“ When that traffic began to be interrupted the contrast between the east and the west was founded and increased.
A last minor effect of the Road upon human society is the use of the Road as a boundary. That is a use, of course, which hardly ever develops in a high civilization. On the contrary, a road of its nature should run transverse to boundaries. ”

“ The advance of a sturdy population carrying westward breadth of views and force of character was deciding the national policy, and the settlement of the boundary line removed a multitude of difficulties which filled the whole period of joint occupancy. Why then should there be longer delay? Action was expected by the people, the needs were growing greater every day.
It is easily explained. The very cause which had gained for the nation the territory, now operated to retard the passage of a bill which would make it a territory in government. ”

“ To contrast our position thirty years ago, under the old common law of England, with that we occupy under the advanced legislation of to-day, is enough to assure us that we have passed the boundary line—from slavery to freedom. We already see the mile-stones of a new civilization on every highway. ”

“ Where land is described as running a certain distance by measurement to an ascertained line, though without a visible boundary, such line will control the admeasurement and determine the extent of the grant. ”

“ There has been at no time such a change as to come within the definition of avulsion. The contention of the complainant is that the true boundary line is the varying center or middle of that channel of the river which is best constituted and ordinarily used for the purposes of navigation. ”

“ There is no line, straight or crooked, suitable for a national boundary, upon which to divide. Trace through, from East to West, upon the line between the free and slave country, and we shall find a little more than one-third of its length are rivers, easy to be crossed, and populated, or soon to be populated thickly upon both sides ”

“ Article 32 The various States interested undertake to give every assistance to the Boundary Commissions, whether directly or through local authorities, in everything that concerns transport, accommodation, labour, material (signposts, boundary pillars) necessary for the accomplishment of their mission. ”

“ To the intrinsic difficulties of questions of boundary lines, especially those described in regions unoccupied and but partially known, is to be added in our country the embarrassment necessarily arising out of our Constitution by which the General Government is made the organ of negotiating and deciding upon the particular interests of the States on whose frontiers these lines are to be traced. ”

“ I do not know of any pretensions to land on the part of individuals without the acknowledged boundary of the lands of the LInited States, but those which are made by the Illinois and Wabash companies; these companies are composed nearly of the same persons, and their claims include almost the whole country between the Lakes, the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Indian boundary line, running from the mouth of the Kentucky river to the northern boundary of the United States. ”

“ These propositions, which are universally recognized as correct where the boundaries of private property touch on streams, are in like manner recognized where the boundaries between states or nations are, by prescription or treaty, found in running water. Accretion, no matter to which side it adds ground, leaves the boundary still the center of the channel. Avulsion has no effect on boundary, but leaves it in the center of the old channel. ”

“ With regard to the presumption as to boundaries, it is to be observed that the northern boundary is supposed to be a more or less irregular road, that the eastern is another road running irregularly northeast and southwest, and the southern, as contended for, continues the same line in a somewhat more northerly direction, so that the outline of the supposed grant resembles the peninsula of Hindustan. ”

“ The term 'inland' can have no such meaning as 'interior,' within the country, within the national boundary line. This rule would bring within the exception Lakes Michigan and Champlain, and exclude from it lakes no larger, Erie and St. Clair. Rivers, too, form boundary lines; and upon any such construction, are they within or without the exception? What rule is to govern the commerce upon the St. John's, the St. Croix, the St. Lawrence, the Niagara, the St. Clair, the Detroit, the St. Mary's, the Pigeon, and the Colorado? Is it inland navigation or not? ”

“ As the boundaries of this grant, like those of Spanish land grants generally, were fixed by such landmarks,-upon the east by a river; upon the north by a pueblo; upon the south by the lands of another pueblo,-it is natural to suppose that the western boundary was fixed, either by reference to a river, a canada, a pueblo, or a range of mountains (sierra) , also a most common boundary. As the Jemez river is far to the westward of the sierra of that name, it is very improbable that this was intended. ”

“ Settling and identifying boundaries on land is a surveyor's job; he must go to the land with his instruments and mark it off. Identifying an ocean boundary, we are told by the briefs and arguments of both parties here, is a much more complex job; it takes much time by surveyors, cartographers, photographers, and oceanographers, a knowledge of angles, tides, rolling waters, higher mathematics, etc. [9] Shorelines are constantly changing, and thus under the Court's formula even this painstaking work cannot provide a means of marking the boundary for all time. ”

“ Since the mountains are so very high, and so snowy, and rocky, and very steep, you can easily see that it would be hard work for surveyors to scramble up with their tripods to find out just where the boundary line between the two countries really ought to be. ”

“ No more departure is made from this plan than convenience or necessity may dictate. When the boundary-line of a township is irregular, from its geographical conformation, a straight line is struck, and the “broken front” is parcelled out according to circumstances. ”

“ Yet, though the tract around him is seemingly bounded every where, the boundary is every where obscure, being formed of trees, thinly dispersed, and retired beyond each other at such distances, that, while they actually limit the view, they appear rather to border dim, indistinct openings into other tracts of country. Thus he always feels the limit to be uncertain, and until he is actually leaving one of these plains, will continually expect to find a part of the expansion still spreading beyond the reach of his eye. ”

“ I think it only right to express the hope that, where the drawing of a boundary line cannot avoid disrupting such unitary services as canal irrigation, railways, and electric power transmission, a solution may be found by agreement between the two States for some joint control of what has hitherto been a valuable common service. ”

“ Keep the boundary line clear between God and his world and all is order and discrimination. Obliterate that boundary and all is pathless morass, black chaos and on the mind the phantasms which belong to the victim of delirium tremens. ”

“ This would give a tract of country of 80 miles by 35, over almost the whole of which our settlements are now scattered.
There are some other objects of importance which might be settled at the time the Indians meet upon the subject of the boundary line. I have before stated to you that none of the roads passing through one settlement to any other in this Territory were made free by treaty, admitting that free ingress and egress were contemplated at the time that the several tracts were ceded to the French. ”

“ And this sacrifice was supposed to secure safety against evil spirits encountered in crossing the boundary line.
Thus it would seem that, from the beginning, on the national threshold, as on the threshold of the temple and of the home, sacrifices were offered, and boundary marks were set up, in recognition of a peculiar sacredness of the border line,–which is in itself a foundation and a limit. These boundary marks were commonly a pillar or a tree, in apparent symbolism of a fructifying or a fruit-bearing agency, of the transmission or the continuance of life. ”

“ The southern, western, and eastern boundaries of the land granted to Larios are well defined, and the objects exist by which those limits can be ascertained. There is no call in the grant for a northern boundary, nor is there any reference to the dise no for any natural object, or other descriptive call, to ascertain it. The grant itself furnishes no other criterion for determining that boundary than the limitation of the quantity, as is expressed in the third condition. ”

“ Conceding that the hills or mountains mentioned in the decree of confirmation as the northern boundary are really upon the east, and form the eastern boundary, and that where a grant is described as bounded by hills and mountains the line runs along the base, and not the summit, of the hills, it does not appear that the land in controversy was not within the boundaries of the grant, as originally made and confirmed. ”